Funny Paper said
Ah, interesting: that's a C suspended chord. Not surprisingly, the "Ultimate Guitar" website has the chords all different: alternating from D7 to G7 (in the key of D apparently), then for the "But you can do something in between" line, they say it's just A. Doesn't sound right; it does sound like a sus chord, as you say.

No, actually your source is right : it is an A chord obviously (both bass and guitar play it rather earnestly) but with the C, F and G notes sung on top of it, which makes it very bluesy because of C (bluesy third of the A chord) and F (bluesy third of D which is the key chord of the song).

They felt all of this by instinct, that's why we call them 'Fab'...

Wow, you mean the Beatles are playing A major, but singing the notes C-F-G on top of it? Surely, their guitars/piano can't be playing a plain A major at that point? It seems like it would generate too much dissonance.

I can see singing the G note with an A major chord; I can even see the bluesy C; but the addition of the F blows my mind.

Couldn't it possibly be that at that point in the D major structure of the song, they decided to also play C-sus4 with their instruments and sing along accordingly? That would still be cool, but it wouldn't be so much against the grain.

Edit: Could it be that, at that point, their instruments play an A-7th-flatted4th-augmented5th chord? (this is a chord the band Chicago used a lot: from my ears, it doesn't replace the notes A with G, C# with Cnatural, or F# with Fnatural, it enables their addition with a cluster effect, though not every note has to be played)

The point is, like you said, not every note has to be played (besides this is a great lesson : "less is more").

Drive My Car is built on the riff bass/guitar in unison all the way through, so the only places where proper chords are played is when the piano comes in. I've always found it intriguing when it stops on the A before the end of the chorus, letting the riff run its way : no need of more, we know where we are !

However, the reason why we can say the last line of the verses is in A major is because the riff tells us so (A - C# - E - F# - E - C#), interestingly enough after these dissonant sung notes.

Try and play D7 and G7 chords on top of the riff, it has something corny to it, except maybe in spare rhythmic accents like in the 'Love' medley where George's guitar from The Word comes on top of the Drive My Car riff.

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Oudis

6 November 20121.29am

Funny Paper

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I'm sorry, but the chords at the "e-chords" site make more sense to me, and more importantly, WORK when I play along:

Concerning "Lady Madonna", I see that Joe's info in the Songs tab outside the forum indicate that Paul wrote nearly all of it, and John seems to have a vague memory of contributing something, but he doesn't specify. Commonly, people assume the "See how they run..." was a Lennonism, and I'd agree. Another possible Lennonism in that song that no one to my knowledge has suggested is the line --

"Sunday morning creeping like a nun" ...

That seems a bit too dark with that Lennon edge to it to be a Pauline line, in my estimation. However, I'm not saying Paul isn't capable of a flash of inspiration that might produce such a line; only that it seems more likely John thought of it.

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